US man to be executed after three trials

The state of Missouri was preparing Tuesday to execute a man sentenced to death three times for a double murder committed more than a quarter of a century ago.

Carman Deck, 56, is due to receive a lethal injection around 6:00 pm (0100 GMT Wednesday) in the Bonne Terre penitentiary in the central United States.

On Monday, Missouri Governor Mike Parson refused to grant clemency and commute his sentence to life imprisonment, as activists had called for.

"Mr Deck has received due process, and three separate juries of his peers have recommended sentences of death for the brutal murders he committed," the Republican governor said in a statement.

Also Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the last appeal by his lawyers, meaning he will be fifth person to be put to death in the United States this year.

In 1996, Deck killed an elderly couple, James and Zelda Long, in suburban St Louis. He had always admitted his responsibility for the crime.

According to the Kansas City newspaper, whose editorial board pleaded for the sentence to be commuted, in 2002 the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict of a first trial, on the grounds that his lawyers had done a poor job of defending him.

In particular, they had failed to present his difficult childhood in foster families.

The US Supreme Court in 2005 overturned a second trial, where Deck appeared with restraints on his feet, wrists and abdomen that were deemed likely to have influenced the perception of the jurors.

In 2008, he received the death penalty in a third trial, but the sentence was overturned in 2017 by a federal judge, on the grounds that all available evidence had not been presented to jurors.

An appeals court, however, restored the decision in 2020, a ruling later upheld by the state Supreme Court.